Protection
by Torikoolz
Summary: In which the Doctor is still taken over by the Cyberplanner and has been fooling Clara. She has to get him back because she is his protector.


**Disclaimer:** None of the characters belong to me, but you already knew that

**A/N:** I really hope you enjoy this story.

* * *

It was the end of another journey, and like all journeys with the Doctor, this one was coming to a sad departure. Clara knew she would see him again, she always saw the Doctor again. Though this time, he had been acting strange, not as quirky as she remembered. His hair that always seemed to be in a perfect shape was deflated a bit, and there was just something about his overall mood. They were little things, and she had tried to ignore them, but now as she was about to leave the TARDIS, she found herself whipping around to look at him. His hands rested on the TARDIS' console, and his body seemed to be shaking. He knew very well she was still there, the door clicked closed rather loudly. Why wasn't he looking at her? She went closer to him, now, her eyes darting around him. His hands were gripping at the console, his knuckles turning white as snow.

"Doctor?" Clara asked tentatively. She began to daintily lift her hand to his shoulder, and as she did so, it was snatched in the air. The hand that grasped around her wrist was the Doctor's. At first her thoughts were, I've made him angry. I knew I would do this some day. Maybe he just doesn't want me touching him anymore. He turned around, his tweed jacket flaring out as he did so. His eyes, they were darkened, and he just didn't seem like the same Doctor. They were in close proximity now. The voice that spoke to her next sounded like the Doctor, but not like him at the same time. She had heard it before... it was the Cyberplanner. He was still here, she had thought he was gone, no this could not be, she was wrong, the Doctor was playing a joke on her. The silver tendrils that climbed up his skin said another thing.

"Doctor, Doctor, Doctor, Doctor, Doctor, Doctor, honestly impossible girl, the only thing impossible about you is the fact that you never stop saying Doctor. It's me, Mr. Clever. Not Doctor. And he thinks that you're clever, ha! If only he could see you right now. Oh wait, he can," the Cyberplanner tightened his grip around Clara's wrist, and before she knew it, her other wrist was held captive as well. She was struggling to get free, but it wasn't working. The tightness was too much, and she had never noted how strong the Doctor actually was, not until now. The only way he had ever touched her was to lightly touch her face, or a kind, warm hug. Perhaps he had more power than she realised, more power than he wished to disclose to her.

"Let go of me!" Clara screamed at a point where it felt like her bones would crack.

"Don't you worry poor little innocent Clara. This isn't me right now, see, its the Doctor, he's trying to grasp a hold of something and right now he can only hold onto your puny little wrists. If only he could move me, but sadly he can't. I'm surprised he even has this much power left. But, oh well, it'll be gone soon enough. There's .3% of the brain that's still his, you know."

The Doctor, he was still in there. She knew he couldn't be gone forever, the Doctor never was. "If he's still in there, then there is no way that he is going to hurt me or let you. He's my protector, he said so the first day we met." Clara hardly even got to sputter out her words before being cut off by the cackling of the Cyberplanner.

"Oh, my dear, if only you knew what I could do, what he could do. And first day you met? Why he didn't save you at all that day, in fact I believe you died, isn't that right Doctor?" It seemed now that the Cyberplanner was speaking to himself and Clara was weary of wether or not to speak. "Your Doctor seems to be mad at me now, Clara. See, he's telling me not to tell you, that I can't tell you why you're impossible. Or why you're such a mystery to him. This is just brilliant, dreamy really," the Cyberplanner leaned his head in closer to her, and at this she wiggled against his hold again. She didn't like that fact that warmth still radiated off of him, or that he still looked like the Doctor. It wasn't right at all. And it made her conflicted, because for her, the Doctor was everything. She was contemplating what to say, but staring into those deep brown puppy eyes only made her think of the Doctor, not a robot who was using him. But she wanted to know why she was impossible.

"Tell me why I'm impossible," she said through gritted teeth, trying to act disgusted with the proximity that they were now. The Cyberplanner's lips tilted upward into a snake like smile. "I said, tell me why I'm impossible!" This time she yelled it and now her throat stung.

"All in time, I want to have something to keep you here instead of having you running off and then me having to come and get you back," at that he let go of her wrists and she fell onto the floor with a loud thump. Apparently he was not going to tell her now, maybe not ever. If she was smart, she would leave, but she wasn't smart, she was clever, there was a difference. She believed that she could get this thing to tell her what she really was. She didn't understand why she was impossible and she needed to know. It had been the only thing that had bothered her for the past month really, and now she could get answers. But how would Clara Oswald go about outsmarting one of the smartest beings in the world? She was just one girl. She didn't have the Doctor anymore and she had to do this alone. Every other time she had been alone just hadn't turned out all that well, in fact she ended up frozen in a glass structure in Sweetville.

"What makes you think I'll stay?" she asked, still on the ground. She felt it would be safe to stay in one spot. "And what makes you think you would even be able to find me?"

The Cyberplanner had been facing away from her and he turned on her again. "Because I know you, Clara Oswin Oswald, and you're the impossible girl, the clever girl, the girl who the Doctor can't loose. You have to stay because no matter how hard you try the Doctor will always find you or get you back, and he can't help but to help me find out where you are. You can't run, and you certainly wouldn't be able to hide forever. Much like the Doctor, I'd like to keep a little companion around. Makes the Cybermen taking over Earth thing much easier."

"I could run, I could stay away forever, I know how to. I know how to run, I've run enough with the Doctor, I know how to get away."

"Idiot!" He snapped at her. "What do you think this is? A game of chess? If it were then you would surely loose, even the Doctor lost. You're no smarter than the Doctor, who was an idiot that let emotions get in the way of the power he could have had. Emotions will always be the pitfall to any of you fleshy beings, wether Human or Time Lord."

As he spoke, the Cyberplanner slowly advanced to her. With each step his anger seemed to grow. She had said something wrong, but anger seemed like the only way she could get him to say things. However she now suddenly saw the Doctor again. Advancing towards her was a man she had upset, someone she looked up to. Her eyes began to water because she had made the Doctor upset. No, Clara, this is a Cyberplanner. You've never made the Doctor act this way. But she felt it her fault that this had all happened, he saved the kids because of her. He probably could have left them otherwise.

"Ugh, look at you, now you're crying. Just like whenever I told you that the Doctor thought you were pretty. Too bad he doesn't, right little Clara? I mean, after all," the Cyberplanner had picked up already on what she was feeling. He was much more clever than she was. Perhaps that's why he told her to call him Mr. Clever at one point. It was true, he was, and there was no escaping it. "The Doctor he's the man who you want. I've seen it in the way you look at him, not just the adoring glances either. And whenever I told you what he 'really' felt, oh you seemed just like putty in my hands. This, Clara, is why you get rid of the emotions." The Cyberplanner was now on the ground and was on his knees. Again he was only inches from Clara, and her breathing had gone shallow, just like his voice had become softer. He knew her rather well for not really knowing her. Before she knew it, his hand was on her cheek. It was unbearably like the Doctor's, warm and soft. She had to remember that she didn't want this. "I can take the emotions away you know, these tears that are threatening to fall from your eyes would be non existent."

Clara began to tilt her head up to look at the Cyberplanner. She narrowed her eyes, "I would never become a Cyberplanner, not even for a million pounds."

The Cyberplanner's face went hard, and the hand against her cheek just pushed her head aside, she didn't fall to the floor of the TARDIS, but she did bend away from the pressure. He stood up then walked away, she stayed on the ground, watching him working on the TARDIS console. She assumed that he was trying to take them somewhere and now she definitely wouldn't be able to leave.

A few minutes of swooshing and silence passed, and Clara decided she needed to stand up and find a way to get her Doctor back. She couldn't be in a depression mode, that was no way the Doctor would act (if only she knew). Then it hit her, an idea so brilliant that it could hardly not work. She walked over to where the Cyberplanner was still standing by the TARDIS console. "I was thinking, Mr. Clever, and see, I just came up with a proposition." He looked like he was about to object, after all a small vein in his neck was beginning to pulse at an awkward rate. "See, if you tell me why I'm the impossible girl, I'll let you turn me into one of you. I'll stop trying to fight to get the Doctor back, and I'll have all the information I need to be content."

"Interesting deal you're trying to make here seeing as how just a few moments ago you thought that becoming a Cyberplanner was the worst thing possible," he was skeptical of her. "However, I think that you don't even know what kind of deal you're making here. I get everything in that pretty little head of yours, and you are just a soul floating in your body forever, unable to speak, to move. You will just watch as the world burns. And all of that just to find out who you are? Its an idiotic deal really."

"Either take the deal or don't take it," she stated, she was playing poker with her own freedom and life. It was something the Doctor did every day, surely she could do it for him.

With a low chuckle, the Cyberplanner turned to her for the third time in the series of events that had occurred. He stuck his hand out to her and she took it. They shook promptly and the deal had been made. Too bad he didn't know her real plans.

"Well, let's get this show on the road. You see Miss Clara, you're the impossible girl. This is because you're the girl twice dead."

"I'm what?"

"You heard me, don't act daft, the girl twice dead. The Doctor, see, you're his biggest mystery he's come across. That's why he keeps you close, sweetheart. Not because he loves you or anything silly like that, but because he wants to know what you are, who you are. How could he have met you as a Dalek? Then later as a Victorian Governess and Barmistress? All these questions are bubbled up in his head and that's why he calls you that name, why he thinks you are impossible. I myself am intrigued, there's never been anyone like you for the Doctor. Anyone who just keeps coming back through time with the same name and the same look and personality. Especially after they've died, thoroughly died, twice."

Clara was speechless. Her head was pounding. This was why she was impossible? He was lying; he had to have been lying. The Doctor had met her twice before? That didn't make sense, though something told her she had heard these words before, but she couldn't remember. It was like a distant thought that had been cut from your mind like a simple equation that you learned while you were just starting arithmetic. "You're lying," she said, her eyes slowly becoming distant. "You're lying to me, I would've remembered, I would've known. You're lying. The Doctor, he would have told me. He wouldn't keep secrets like that." The tears that had disappeared before returned. They now were real tears and fell down her cheeks and met up at her chin to drip down onto her leather jacket.

"Oh, but he did Clara, because the truth was too unbearable for you. See your tears? They are why emotions are so awful," the Cyberplanner reached over to her with a hand and put it on her arm. "Now, a deal is a deal."

"Yes, I understand the deal, but can I please just tell him something before I go, it won't be long," Clara replied. It couldn't be that big of a deal for her to talk to the Doctor though this was part of her plan. Not the tears though; she had wanted to be brave not breaking down when she said it.

"Fine," he growled at her, "make it quick." He looked her straight in the eyes and Clara looked back.

"Doctor, I know you're in there somewhere," she began. She didn't look at the scowl that etched the Cyberplanner's face. "And I just want you to know something before I'm not me anymore. I only know of the few times we have been together, and how magical they have been. I've seen things a human girl is never meant to see. I've seen the galaxies with you, the stars, and I've even helped defeat so many things. But never forget, I did all of this with you, Doctor. And even if I'm just a shell, I'll always know I did it with you and I'll always know I broke one of the main rules I had made for myself whenever I began to travel with you. Don't fall in love. I did that trick to often. And now, before I am to depart, I just have to tell you, that Doctor, I love you. It's a dumb thing to say, but I do, and I've loved you ever since that day that we were trapped in a cold submarine together. It was the first time I realized it, and now I know that I do. If it's true that I've had past lives, then I understand why you didn't tell me. I'm not keeping anymore secrets from you, though and if you ever get back, be sure to tell me all the secrets you didn't because, well, I won't be me anymore."

The Cyberplanner had made no moves since she had begun to talk, and even now he looked frozen in the spot. Clara didn't know what she was doing anymore, but for now, she pushed the idea that this was the Cyberplanner out of her head, and she took her hand and put them on the Doctor's cheeks, she pulled his face down to her own and kissed him as she had never kissed anyone before. It felt magical to her, and she was glad to have finally done it before she sold her soul away to the devil forever. She pulled away her lips and looked at the Doctor, or the Cyberplanner, whatever this thing she was in love with was. Their eyes were closed, and when they opened, they were not as cold and hard as they had been earlier.

"If only I knew how to say it too, Clara Oswald."


End file.
